Gun shows, thieves linked to drug arms

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, July 16, 2009

WASHINGTON — Less than half of an estimated 18,000 American firearms used in Mexico's drug wars over the last three years have been traced back to licensed gun dealers — suggesting most are stolen or bought at gun shows where background checks are not required, a federal law enforcement official told Congress on Thursday.

The finding suggests that despite a national crusade to track weapons smuggled into Mexico, the task will be daunting, making it extremely difficult to definitively track and disrupt the illicit firearms trafficking at the heart of cartel violence.

Bill McMahon, deputy assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Mexican authorities say they have seized an estimated 100,000 firearms from gangland-style drug cartels and have submitted 20,000 to ATF to trace their origins. Ninety percent of the 20,000 — or 18,000 — were manufactured, imported or sold in the United States, McMahon said.

And only 44 percent, 7,900 of those weapons were traced back to retail transactions at federally licensed gun dealers in the United States, McMahon told members of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

ID of purchaser vital

Tracing firearms remains “an essential component” of curtailing firearms trafficking along the southwest border and identifying the first retail purchaser is key to investigating how the gun came to be used in a crime or how it landed in Mexico, McMahon said.

More than 6,600 federally licensed firearms dealers operate along the southwest border. But ATF remains unable to trace the ownership of weapons purchased at gun shows, McMahon conceded.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., chair of the House subcommittee that oversees border issues, said the country needs to honor constitutional protections for gun ownership while closing the so-called gun show loophole that permits sales at gun shows without the paperwork and background checks required for firearms purchases at federally licensed gun dealers.

Republicans including Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and Michael Rogers, R-Ala., emphasized that few guns seized in Mexico have actually been traced back to the United States.